Our Home Recycling Center
There is no need to talk in depth about recycling. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve at least seen the logo and the blue bins and heard most of the debates. This post is mostly for discussion about recycling practices and personal anecdotes.
To start it off, we offer a photo of our home “recycling center”. Sorting isn’t strictly necessary here in Waterloo but we do it anyway for a number of reasons:
- It’s faster for the pickup at the curb, which means no big truck idling outside our door for longer than necessary.
- Sorting is a fun game for kids and an easy “starter chore.”
- It helps us only put out bins that are full and need pickup rather than every week.
- It keeps the garage much tidier. Before this system we just opened the side door and flung recyclables in the general direction of the bins. It wasn’t pretty.
As you can see from the bin in the middle, we sometimes “overdo” the recycling and put in things that get us smacked with a green “you screwed up” label 
. Hopefully someday everything will be recyclable here.
Lastly, remember that the recycling motto (“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!”) is a list of best to worst options — not a set of equivalent choices. Basically reduce your waste overall (even if it’s recyclable), reuse what you can and recycle only as a last resort.
